Splash On Color with Elements’ Paint Bucket Tool

The Paint Bucket tool in Photoshop Elements is a longtime occupant of the Tools panel. This tool, whose icon looks just like a bucket, behaves like a combination of the Fill command and the Magic Wand tool.

It makes a selection based on similarly colored pixels and then immediately fills that selection with color or a pattern. Like the Magic Wand tool, this tool is most successful when you have a limited number of colors, as shown in the figure.

Anti-aliasing: Choose this option to smooth the edges between the filled and unfilled areas.

Contiguous: If selected, this option selects and fills only pixels that are touching within your selection. If the option is deselected, pixels are selected and filled wherever they lie within your selection.

All Layers: This option selects and fills pixels within the selection in all layers that are within your tolerance level.